


The One Hundred And First Day

by tielan



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 100 Days, Angst, Gen, episode epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-19
Updated: 2001-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 18:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thoughts after Jack gets back from Edora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Don't Think Jack Expected To Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> My first Stargate story ever, I believe.

Sam sits on the floor of her house with a beer in her hand.

The TV is off and so are the lights.

It's just her, her beer, and her thoughts.

_I don't think Jack expected to come home._

Daniel should have been a diplomat, not an archaeologist.

And she, Major Sam Carter, should have been a 2IC striving to rescue her CO, not a woman seeking the man she cared about.

She drove out of the SGC this evening, heading for home. Heading for somewhere a long way away from the man who had walked through the Stargate earlier that day to the sound of much cheering. Tanned, toughened, and half-shaven after three months on an agricultural planet, Colonel Jack O'Neill returned to earth with all the pomp and ceremony due a hero.

The gossip had spread through the base like lightning: the Colonel was back! He had been lost on Edora, but through the patient efforts of his 2IC, they'd gotten him back through the Stargate!

If only the gossip had finished there.

If only.

"I heard he was living with one of the locals when they got through!" muttered one of the young officers of the SGC in the mess hall.

"No way!"

"Way!"

"And the woman wanted him to father her child!"

"Did he?"

"Who knows?"

"How like a man!" exclaimed another, indignantly, "After all Major Carter did to get him back…"

"Shh…Lisa – that's her over there…"

Sam sat down opposite Corporal Simmons and smiled wearily. "Maybe now he's back, I can get some sleep," she remarked wryly, and the young man smiled, although she saw how much effort it cost him. He knew. How many others?

"You did a great job, Major," he said warmly. Blue eyes earnest. "You would never have given up on the Colonel."

_And that's just the problem,_ she thought to herself now in the darkness. _I didn't and now I'm the laughing stock of the base for expending so much energy for a man who doesn't care as much for me as I thought he did._

How many sleepless nights and frustrating dead-ends had she seen in the last three months? Daniel and Teal'c had dragged her out into the sunlight, but once there, all she had wanted was to go back down into the artificial light of the base and keep working. She had staved off the tiredness by thinking of him. Thinking of the drawling voice, and the sarcastic inflections; of the terrible jokes, and the little-boy looks; of the smiles he could give that would warm her to her toes, and the feel of his arm around her shoulder as he hauled her through the Stargate.

She was an idiot.

The man who had filled her thoughts in his absence and haunted her dreams when she slept had given up on seeing his home planet again and flung himself into the arms of another woman.

He had even asked the woman to come back to earth with him.

At that moment, standing with Daniel and Teal'c, Sam had wanted nothing more than to run to the nearest bushes and spew her guts out until she could bring up nothing more. This woman with her work-roughened hands and her hungry eyes, her agricultural homeworld and her simple ways…come back to earth? To be wife and lover to Colonel Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force, a man living in the most technologically advanced society on earth, with knowledge of a hundred races and a thousand planets?

The thought was worse than nauseating; it was revolting.

Thank God the woman had refused.

If she had returned with Jack, Sam's resignation would have been on the General's desk within the week. She would have blamed it on stress, on weariness, on the desire to lose no more friends through the Stargate because it hurt too much.

She would have been lying through her teeth.

She acknowledges that now.

But even more than the personal pain she feels about the Edoran woman, she feels the pain of Daniel's words.

_I don't think Jack expected to come home._

Why? _Why_ didn't he expect to come home?

He thought the Stargate destroyed. No, he wasn't to know it was buried – the Edorans had no advanced technology with which to detect the Stargate naquadah. But even if there was no hope of return through the Stargate, Jack had seen enough of space travel to know that light years could be travelled across by more than just wormholes.

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week or next month, maybe not even next year…but they would have found him and brought him back.

_Do we mean so little to you, Colonel?_ She asks the dark. _Do you think so little of us that we'd abandon you on a planet without trying everything in our means to get you back?_ They've all been back for each other, time and time again. They've risked their reputations, their commissions, their lives to be there for one another. Tears streak down her face and into her mouth, and she drinks another draught of beer, the malt flavors washing away the bitter salt. _Do you think that I'd ever let go of the hope that we'd get you back, somehow?_

After three years, she thought the question should be rhetorical – a self-evident answer.

Perhaps not.

Someone knocks on the door, but Sam just sits on the floor and waits for them to go away.

But they don't, and it looks like they won't either.

The knocking turns into banging, and banging into thumping.

Whoever is out there, they're not going to give up that easily.

Finally, she stumbles to her feet and opens the door, glaring blue daggers at whatever soul has chosen to beard the lioness in her den.

Daniel looks back at her from the open doorway. He glances over her flushed face and red eyes, and his eyes flicker to the living room where he sees the empty bottles. "I think you need company, Sam."

"I think you need a lobotomy, Daniel," she snaps, and promptly hates herself for doing so. _Don't become a bitter hag from this, Sam! Women have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love._

He sighs, but something in his eyes set, and he pushes past her into the house. For a moment, she's stunned, staring at him as he stands in the middle of her lounge. Jack, she would have expected to barge in, but Daniel…?

"What are you doing here, Daniel?" She shuts the door behind him and leans against it.

"They said you'd gone off-base for the night. Janet wanted to be sure you were okay, I volunteered to be the sacrifice." He turns from his contemplation of the room to face her. There's a smile on his lips, but none in his eyes. "Got any more beer?"

She stares at him. "You don't drink beer, Daniel."

"I do tonight," he seats himself down and looks up at her. "Sam, please." Eyes that particular shade of blue should be illegal – especially when the person is pleading for something.

Grumbling, she gets him the beer and sits it down in front of him. Then she resumes her place on the floor facing him. "Why'd you come here?"

"Because _I_ need company, Sam." He takes a long drink of beer, "You're not the only one Jack hurt by not expecting to come home."

For a moment, she's bewildered by his statement. Holy Hannah, is Daniel saying what she thinks he's saying?

"Daniel…"

He catches her expression and half-laughs, "No, Sam, I'm not confessing to long-hidden feelings for Jack." Another long drink. "I'm just angry at him for giving up so fast."

_Major Carter, get your mind out of the gutter!_ For a moment she's furious with herself – in that one instant, she hated Daniel as passionately as she hated the Edoran woman. _You're a sick girl, Sam._

Unaware of his companion's thoughts, her friend and team-mate continues with a bitter laugh, "Colonel Jack O'Neill, Mr. Never-say-die, who would never give up or lose hope or leave a friend behind… He gave up." Another drink, before the archaeologist spits, "He gave up on going home in three months! Three months!" A pause before Daniel vents the core of his anger: "He gave up on _us!_"

Oh yes, Sam knows how Daniel feels.

"Daniel…"

"Don't defend him, Sam. Not right now. I can't take it…" Daniel hunches over and he's shaking. She gets up and sits beside him, pulls his head onto her shoulder and lets him draw on her strength, while the tears run quietly down her own cheeks. "He thought that _we'd_ give up on _him_!"

"Yes." she holds him tight, feeling the same emotions course through both of them.

This is what it means to be part of a team. Comfort and support, emotional and physical. Someone to catch your arm before you trip, and to pick you up and brush you off and check that no harm is done when you fall face-first in the dust. The promise that when the milk is spilled, they'll help you clean the mess it made, and then they'll share their milk with you. Trust in your team-mates, and put your faith in their abilities – or if not in their abilities, at least in their determination.

_But you didn't, did you, sir?_ Daniel's not shaking anymore, but he's still holding her so tightly she's afraid to let go. Daniel's lived his life in a state of emotional limbo. No family, few close relationships. Most of them academics who laughed his extreme theories out of the digs, museums, and research libraries. Only when he went to Abydos did he find the family he'd been seeking all his life. _We all need somewhere to call home, and Daniel never had it. Not until Abydos. And then when Abydos was denied him, he found it here, with us. SG-1._

_Oh, sir, can't  you see what you've done to Daniel? He knows that you'd never give up looking for him if he was lost. Not until you knew without a doubt that he was gone. You'd do that for any of us and we know it. Now he knows that you don't trust him – that you don't trust us as much as we trust you._

Now she's the one shaking, but not with grief – with anger. Anger at Jack on Daniel's behalf. _Daniel's so fragile inside, Jack. He trusts you above anyone else he knows – his friend and champion. How do you think it makes him feel to find that you don't know him at all?_

It's easier to sustain this anger than the other. She can live with her own bitterness, she can't live with Daniel's. Not when he's come to her for comfort – for someone to take refuge in. _He should have known better._

"Yes, he should have known better."

She starts, unaware that she'd said the words out loud. Daniel raises his head from her shoulder and lets her go with an apologetic smile. The moment of fury and bitterness is gone, washed from his soul. It may resurface, but he has conquered it – for now. He's reassured himself that he still has her support. His family is still there for him – some of them, anyway. He just needed that confirmation.

But now the inquisition is shifting, and the blue gaze fixes her firmly. "How are _you_ doing, Sam?"

She half-smiles, half-winces and shifts away from him a little, settling her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands together. "Drained," she admits at last. She's not sure how much she can bear to explain to him – although he probably has seen enough to draw the correct conclusions. "It's almost an anticlimax, having him back." Although she doesn't have him back…not really.

"You nearly killed yourself getting him back, Sam," Daniel murmurs and he leans forward beside her. "You did an incredible task."

Yeah, I did an incredible task – I put all my effort into getting the man I…I cared about back and ended up with my CO instead.

"_You_ brought him back." There's no mistaking the emphasis, and she knows that push has come to shove, and Daniel is going to push. Damn him.

There's a bitter note in her laugh, "Did he want to come back?"

A measured silence follows before Daniel sighs, "Yes, I think he did."

No other refuge but sarcasm, so she takes it. "You _think_ he did?"

"Okay, so I _know_ he did."

"You didn't want to come back from Abydos." The words are no sooner out than she curses her tongue.

He snaps right back, "There's no comparison between Jack on Edora and myself on Abydos."

"What do you mean, there's no comparison?"

When Daniel's got archaeology on the brain, he'll become absent-minded about everything else, but when he steps into an argument his mind blitzes along. It's one of his more endearing qualities – the lightning thought that arcs between the terminals of the mind. "I stayed of my own free will, Sam. I could have come home, but I had nothing here on earth for me – no family, no friends. The woman I loved was on Abydos, so I stayed." He speaks passionately, and abruptly she realises he's reliving his past in his mind, memories carefully preserved and pored over when he feels lost or alone. "I was happy on Abydos – you saw that when you and Jack and Kowalski and Ferretti came through the gate. I was more than happy, Sam, I was content."

Sam remembers the fleeting envy she'd felt, watching Dr. Daniel Jackson and his adopted Abydonian family laugh and touch and tease each other. In her life, she'd had friends and family, but in the last few years they had drifted away, tenuous threads of relating that could so easily snap. She'd watched Daniel Jackson and his wife and felt the eye-prickling longing for a relationship that intense. The emotion makes her sharp, "So?"

"Jack didn't get a choice on Edora. He stayed to help the locals and got stranded. Then, too, he had people waiting for him on the other side of the gate – he had us." There's a touch of bitterness in his voice as he is reminded of how little the Colonel had thought of his friends. "The ties we have as a team and as individuals…he had them…has them…" The grimace across his face is pained, but he forces it away. She can see the effort it takes him, like she could see Corporal Simmons' effort to make small talk earlier that day. A half-smile, brief but genuine, flits across his lips, "Did you know there are jokes about SG-1 – about our closeness as a team – on-base?"

She shakes her head mutely, surprised. The on-base gossip lines don't interest her – so little of it's true, anyway.

The smile lingers, just a moment. "Remind me to tell you some of them sometime."

The humor helps, just a little. "I'll hold you to that, Dr. Jackson."

"I'll expect you to, Major Carter." The blue eyes shift, the expression in them changes and suddenly she realises what he's about to say.

"Don't, Daniel. Don't say it." She doesn't want to hear about the Edoran woman. Not when she's feeling so raw right now.

"He found a woman to love on Edora, Sam. Maybe he was displacing feelings for someone else."

Sam shakes her head, vehemently. She'd like to believe that, she would! But the evidence says otherwise,  and the truth could be too painful to face. Presently, they're emotions that she can keep under control, and hide beneath a military demeanor. Bad enough that she has...feelings...for her CO. Worse if he returned them. Which he doesn't and he won't. Or he would have trusted her to find him a way back home. "Don't do this to me, Daniel." Her voice is low, struggling for equanimity. She doesn't care that Daniel knows – Daniel is as safe and close as the graves he used to study. "He asked her to come back with him, remember?"

"And she refused, Sam. Jack might have managed to be happy on Edora, but he would never have been content. Not Jack O'Neill. The Edoran woman knew that, too. Why else do you think she let him go?" She knows he's right, even if she rebels at the thought of the pain and effort she went through to bring him back, and the pain it cost her to understand that he had forgotten her. Daniel turns her head to look at him, his finger lightly touching her jawline. "You can keep an eagle in a sparrow's cage, Sam, but it will always be an eagle." The innocence of those eyes stabs through to the core of her being and she drops her gaze from his.

Yes, she knows it would have been a crime to leave Jack on Edora – whether he wanted it or not. And Daniel knows she knows, and so the inquisition is put away for another time when hard truths need to be faced and only the innocent can declare that the emperor has no clothes.

She did the right thing in bringing him back. To have her stubborn, sarcastic Colonel back she would have done a lot more.

Still, she curls up around her pain, embraces it for one fierce, furious moment and cries, "God, I wish he'd never come back!" But she knows it for a lie even as the words leave her lips.

She's glad he's home.

She's so glad he's home.

"Sam…" Daniel reaches for her and now it's her turn to draw strength from him.

They've both been hurt by someone they care about, and that man is one and the same. They'll keep loving him, but it will be a slow journey back to the way things were.

But they'll get there.

Someday.

 

 


	2. I Never Expected To Be Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack never expected to get home.

Jack sits on the floor of his house with a beer in his hand.

The TV is off, the lights are off.

It’s just him, his beer, and his thoughts.

_I never expected to be home._

Already the memories of the months on Edora are fading. As if it were a dream from which he had awakened and gone out into his life and forgotten.

Perhaps it was a dream.

Perhaps he should have continued dreaming.

_God, I wish he’d never come back!_

On the floor of his living room, he jerks, feeling the knife in him twist. Another long swig from the bottle dulls the ache a little – just a little.

_Way to spend your first night back home, Jack._

He’d hoped, ah, he’d hoped to spend it with his friends.

Teal’c had come to see him in the infirmary while the Doc was checking him over. The big man laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It is good to have you back, Colonel O’Neill.”

“It’s good to be back, Teal’c. Where’s Daniel and Carter?”

For a moment, Teal’c looked disconcerted, before he answered, “Daniel Jackson has gone home for the day. I believe that Major Carter has done the same.”

Huh. They hadn’t even waited around to see that he was okay!

Boy, were they in for it once he got off base!

He pestered Janet until gave she him clearance to leave the mountain. His tests came up perfectly normal – his cardio results were better and his muscle-mass had increased, but after the manual labor he’d done on Edora, that was no surprise. “Just don’t drive home, Colonel. Get one of the marines to drop you off.”

He nodded, and jumped off the bed with some of his old ebullience. Strange how naturally he slipped back into some habits after three months of absence.

Strange how other habits completely eluded him after three months of absence.

Almost at the door, the Doc addressed him, “Colonel.”

“Doc?” He turned and met the stern blue gaze.

“Leave Major Carter alone for a while. She’s a very tired astrophysicist right now.”

Now how by all that was holy had she known that he’d been contemplating that very thing? And there was something curious about the way she’d looked at him as she said it. He shook the feeling that the Doc could see through him like a pane of glass and gave her his best cocky grin. “I will.”

He lied.

No way was Carter going to escape his thanks for everything she had done to get him back. Not a chance. Not in a thousand years. Not a snowflake’s hope in hell.

But he’d go and give Daniel a razz first. Wind Danny-boy up a bit, and remind himself how good it was to be home.

God, he’d missed his friends.

He got the marine to take him as far as Daniel’s place.

But Danny-boy wasn’t in.

So Jack called a taxi and headed for Sam’s house.

In spite of the Doc’s warning, he’d bang on her door until she let him in. He’d thank her for her work, and then…and then…

And then he’d leave and let her get the sleep she deserved.

All he wanted was to see her again. Clearly see her, not through the haze of his time on Edora.

So he told himself.

He parked on the street, walked up to the door, raised his hand to knock and heard her furious cry. “God, I wish he’d never come back!”

His hand dropped to his side, suddenly nerveless. He dropped his forehead to the wood of the door in sudden bewilderment and heard the gentleness of a man’s voice murmuring her name.

It twists him up now, as it twisted him up standing outside her door.

He dreamed of her on Edora. Dreamed of her and Daniel and Teal’c. Wondered if they were out there, gating through the stars, as he never again would. Remembered their faces, their voices, their laughter, and their camaraderie. Remembered their friendship and their purpose.

Those dreams had kept his hope alive at first, but when the days ground into weeks and the weeks ground into months, he had put them away and refused to look at them any longer. Hope had withered, and the dreams had stung more than they had helped.

Who was he kidding?

Beautiful, brilliant Major Sam Carter with a degree in astrophysics and a heart as pure as crystal, and old, scarred Colonel Jack O’Neill who’d been in black ops and a POW and had a smart mouth and stains all over his soul?

_Get back down to Edora, Jack._

Ground down by more than just time, he had let the memories go. Of Earth, and of his team, and particularly of Sam.

Laira was no Sam. She would never understand all that he was or all that he had been. She would never soar the way Sam would – passionately driven by her dreams and the endless quest for knowledge.

But Sam was as far away as Earth – as the stars that gleamed in the heavens above. While he walked among the stars he had dared to dream; but once anchored to the ground he had seen the futility of such fancies.

Laira was there by his side, never quite understanding his despair, just supporting him in the only way she knew how. And he responded in the only way she wanted.

He and Laira were much the same: older and worn down by time and hardship. He went to her as a kindred spirit, as a man seeking company and companionship. Love takes many forms, reveals itself in many ways. Yes, he loved Laira. She was a quiet spirit, easy-going and content. But she belonged to his time on Edora, and he had known that even as he asked her to come back with him.

Jack was a man caught between worlds. Two men warred inside him, one older and hard-bitten with all the hungry memories of Earth. One newer and quieter, with all the yearnings for an easier life and an easier way. The two would never reconcile within him, so he had left the quiet part of his soul in Laira’s keeping and returned through the Stargate to Earth.

_Don’t lie to yourself, Jack. You returned through the Stargate to _her_._

He puts the empty bottle on the floor and wraps his arms around himself.

He never thought that coming home would hurt so much.

_I dreamed of you, Sam. I dreamed of your smile and your eyes and your voice explaining something I didn’t understand and the angle of your head as you studied some new technology we brought through the gate._

_Did you dream of me? At least in the beginning?_ According to the General, Sam started the project to rescue him with grim determination and had rarely let up in the time since. “The only people who could pull her from her work were Dr. Jackson and Teal’c.”

And what did Daniel do to pull Sam from her work? How did he induce Sam-the-workaholic to drag her attention from the rescue of a man who was a billion miles away? His mind claws at him, wondering what things were said, what things were done…

_You’re being paranoid, Jack. Too much time spent in black ops._

But it fitted. Oh God, it fitted.

Sam’s avoidance, he understood. There was something between him and her, if only the chemistry of attraction. He’d seen the stiffness in her gait as she walked back to the Stargate, and knew that she’d seen Laira. She’d known what he’d done and she’d erected the barrier between them. That, he could accept, albeit painfully.

But Daniel…Daniel of all people should have understood the pull to belong from his time in Abydos. Daniel should have been there to look at him with the eyes of a child, and touch his shoulder and say, “Good to have you back, Jack.” Daniel whose wife had died nearly half a year ago. Daniel who left the base early without seeing his returned friend and ran to Sam.

And Teal’c…Teal’c must have known…or at least suspected. Why else the moment of uncertainty that shone in the Jaffa’s eyes when asked where Daniel and Sam were?

_God, I wish he’d never come back!_

_Sam…_ Daniel’s voice in her house, Daniel’s car sitting out the front.

Of all the things he’d dreamed on Edora, this was not one of them.

His two closest friends, grown closer by his absence, finding solace with each other…

Daniel in Sam’s arms and in Sam’s bed and in Sam’s body.

It aches, a physical pain that tears through him and leaves him gasping.

I never expected to get home.

He’s been hurt by two people he loves, by their interaction with each other. He’ll keep loving them, but it will be a slow journey back to the way things were.

But he’ll get there.

Someday.


End file.
